Kage Baker, RIP

January 31, 2010

According to Kathryn Cramer and others, Kage Baker passed away this morning. Rest in peace, Kage. You were one of the good ones, and I would like to think that this is not the end, that instead you have merely been assigned by The Company to some new mission.

Ann and I can’t claim to be close friends of Kage’s, but she was one of those colleagues who you could always count on and who you always expected to be there, and whose loss you feel severely. She contributed to several of our books, always with grace and professionalism. She even recorded a video with her parrot for our pirate anthology, one of our fondest memories of that project.

As we told Kage via email last week, we are dedicating the Lambshead cabinet of curiosities anthology to her, and her sister told us she got a definite kick out of that. She always had a good sense of humor.

Dr. Baker was a contributor to the prior volume, our fake disease guide, and would have contributed to this follow-up if she’d been able. (Dr. Baker’s many accomplishments and adventures will of course be memorialized in the front matter to the cabinet anthology.)

She is an inspiration, and a humble spirit. I am honored to have been a friend and to have been in her realm.

About Jeff VanderMeer

Author photo by Kyle Cassidy.

Jeff VanderMeer recently served as the 2016-2017 Trias Writer-in-Residence for Hobart-William Smith College. His latest novel is Borne, out from MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, which Colson Whitehead called “a thorough marvel.” He is also known for his critically acclaimed NYT-bestselling Southern Reach trilogy from FSG,which won the Shirley Jackson Award and Nebula Award. The trilogy also prompted theNew Yorkerto call the author “the weird Thoreau” and has been acquired by publishers in 35 other countries, with Paramount Pictures releasing a movie in 2018. VanderMeer’s nonfiction has appeared in theNew York Times, theGuardian, the Atlantic.com, Vulture, Esquire.com, and theLos Angeles Times. He has taught at the Yale Writers’ Conference, lectured at MIT, Brown, and the Library of Congress, and serves as the co-director of Shared Worlds, a unique teen writing camp. You can contact him at press info at vandermeercreative.com. More...